The present invention relates to an insulating element, particularly as used in prefabricated wall structures and the like, as a supporting and insulating core material, and a beneficial method for the manufacture of such supporting insulating elements.
Known insulating elements of this type may consist of plates of self-supporting, porous light weight materials, for example foam plastics. Although such materials usually have good insulation properties their use as a core material is limited by their insufficient shear strength properties and relatively low rigidity. If sufficient strength properties are to be obtained, the self-supporting insulating material must have a relatively high weight per volume, thus resulting in heavier and more expensive structures.
Cheap insulating materials such as mineral wool do not have any supporting properties at all, and if such materials are employed as core material in prefabricated wall structures or the like, the structure must be braced by supporting elements, such as ribs, corrugated plates, honeycomb structures or the like, made from a stiffer material which transmits the shear forces between the outer surfaces of the structure, the cavities between the supporting and bracing elements being filled with the soft insulating material. This requires a rather complicated process when producing the wall structures, and in addition as seen from the point of view of fire safety, it is disadvantageous in that the free insulating material easily drops out in case the outer plates catch fire or melt.